Bashir Mamdani’s rejoinder

In his response, Dr Gulhati’s states that his article did not deal with scientific content and therefore did not need to give scientific references; that newspaper accounts of deaths in the trials were adequate proof of something wrong happening in the trial; that newspapers have their own rules and regulations for responsible reporting.

I fully sympathise with Dr Gulhati’s aims to bring greater scrutiny to research trials but I differ with him on how one should go about it.

Therefore, as a sole source of information, they are not and should not be equated to proof of medical malpractice. While a newspaper may publish Dr Gulhati’s article without references, that would be inappropriate in an academic journal such as the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, which must insist on appropriate scientific references in all articles accepted for publication. If the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics publishes an article alleging serious malpractice based exclusively on newspaper reports, then it would be guilty of editorial malpractice.

What we lack in India is a credible mechanism for airing complaints or serious misgivings by well-intentioned outsiders about a particular research trial. In the USA, at the public hospital where I practised for 30 years, if any member of the public had serious doubts about a trial conducted in the hospital, he/she could approach a lay member of the hospital’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). The details of the complaint were discussed by the IRB and, when indicated, an independent reviewer was appointed to investigate such charges. The findings were made public in a timely manner. I do not know if such mechanisms exist in India. If not, these are critically needed and would protect researchers from baseless charges.

Research is a vital necessity for India. While we must protect people from unscrupulous or fraudulent research trials, we must not discourage research by painting most researchers with a tarred brush.